


dreamwalk

by lovages



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, M/M, Season 10 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-22 23:29:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2525645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovages/pseuds/lovages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has been visiting him, slipping quietly into his reach and then slinking out with the shadows before Castiel can get a proper hold of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dreamwalk

When Castiel wakes up dust motes are swirling in the buttery beams of sunlight that slant through the gaps in the moth-eaten curtains on his bed. It’s beautiful. The world is still, in fierce betrayal, so beautiful. He sought the most desolate squalor to hide in and still so much beauty shines through the cracks defiantly. Dean is alive.

When he shifts, the bed creaks in protest. A tickle in his throat triggers the first cough and that sets off many more. It’s painful. It doesn't abate for what feels like forever. What a strange thought. As an angel, he has spent millennia under heaven's orders. He has a real idea of the true measure of eternity. And yet, here he is, all too human and unable to tolerate more than a few moments of pain.

“That better not be contagious.” 

That voice– Castiel’s head whips up just in time to see– Dean. He chokes on a sharp inhale and doubles over, wheezing.

The quirk of Dean’s lips falls. He makes a soothing noise and says, “Easy. Easy there, buddy. No use coughing up a lung. You kinda need that to breathe.”

There’s a tray in Dean's hands. He sets it down on the nightstand carefully. The mattress moans and sags threateningly under his weight when he sits down before Castiel. Swirling eddies of dust puff up and the sunlight turns them into particles of gold. Castiel coughs again. Dean’s palm settles heavily between Castiel’s shoulder blades. A moment later, he begins to rub broad, soothing circles along Castiel’s back. 

Castiel shivers into the warmth. Dean radiates heat and light. He always has. It’s comforting. Castiel's chest is still burning and his throat is raw, but somehow, he feels better. He leans into the touch gratefully and at long last turns to look at Dean. Drinks in the sight of him. The rueful green eyes, the fine lines around them, the gentle set of his mouth.

“What are you doing here?” Castiel sounds hoarse, voice cracked and sore. He knows better than to ask. This isn’t, after all, the first time. Dean has been visiting him, slipping quietly into his reach and then slinking out with the shadows before Castiel can get a proper hold of him. Still, Castiel can’t help it. He has to ask. He has to hope. He has to believe that there’s a chance this might be real. 

Dean smiles, eyes tired and fond. Even the quirk of his lips is lopsided. He stops rubbing Castiel’s back. His fingers settle over the hill of Castiel’s shoulder and he squeezes gently.

“Made you soup,” he says, by way of explanation. “Tomato rice. House rules.”

“I don’t think it’s going to help,” Castiel says, licking his lips and swallowing dryly. His throat protests in agony. Though it’s impossible, he feels the cut along his Adam’s apple, the memory of his grace being stolen acute. 

“That pessimism? It ain’t cute,” Dean says firmly, moving the tray from the nightstand to a spot on the bed between them. There's a glass of water beside the bowl of soup. The liquids slosh precariously close to the edges but nothing spills. Dean is careful as he offers Castiel the water first, holding the glass to Castiel’s cracking lips. Castiel drinks it all. He hadn't realized he was thirsty.

“Better?” Dean asks gently, voice low and warm and gruff. Castiel nods in gratitude. He sags against Dean, succumbing to the exhaustion. Dean’s arm wraps around Castiel's weak shoulders, hitching him closer. “Good,” Dean concedes with another crooked smile. He turns his head and presses his lips to Castiel’s temple in a soft kiss. Castiel soaks it up and breathes it in with a shudder. Dean squeezes his arm again, lips lingering against fevered skin. Castiel feels the warm puff of an exhale and then Dean rests his forehead against Castiel’s temple and presses a kiss to his cheek. 

“Come on.” Dean’s voice is gentle, like he’s talking to a lost, scared creature. “Let’s get some food in you.” 

Castiel doesn’t protest. His nod is minute.

“Good man.” Dean smiles and lets go of Castiel to pick up the bowl and Castiel immediately draws his hands up to accept it. “Uh-uh.” Dean shakes his head, holding the bowl close to his chest and stirring the soup to cool it. “You might spill. I got this.” He meets Castiel’s gaze and smiles again. This time, Castiel tries to return it.

It’s strange. Being fed. Being looked after. It’s not like Dean at all. And there lies the weakness. But Castiel doesn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth. He accepts every bite Dean holds up for him and he never points out that even with his rotting grace, he can still taste the molecules. Castiel keeps his eyes fixed on the bowl, on Dean’s fingers cupped around it and the steady, unwavering gentleness with which he spoons out another bite and brings it to Castiel’s lips. Minutes pass in the silence and Castiel can’t tolerate the tenderness anymore. The kindness. The crushing magnitude of his mistakes weighs too heavily. He doesn’t deserve it. He didn’t save Dean.

“Dean.” Even as he tries to protest, Castiel feels the soup warm his belly. It has soothed the ache in his throat. Its nourishment might not actually help, but it is still a salve.

“Enough?” Dean asks lightly. The spoon goes back to the bowl and without a protest, the bowl back to the nightstand. “Okay, that’s good,” Dean says, pulling one knee up at a time to take his shoes off. “You got through half of it, champ. Time to get some shut eye so your body can heal up.”

“I can’t heal,” Castiel points out, watching as Dean pushes his shoes under the bed, out of the way. “My grace is–”

“I know,” Dean says, impatient for the first time. He crawls up the bed, ignoring its protests and collapses beside Castiel. “I know,” he repeats, and for the first time he sounds tired. He sighs and shifts around again to pull Castiel closer. “We’ll fix it. We’ll figure it out. We always do. And you need to make it until then.” 

“Okay.” Castiel worms back down on the bed and rests his head on Dean’s shoulder. Dean sighs and settles against the pillows, arm curling around Castiel's shoulders, chin resting atop Castiel’s head. 

Silence. For a while. So still and undisturbed that Castiel feels that phantom ring in his ears, a perturbing facsimile of angelic voices. But it is nothing more than an illusion.

“Sleep,” Dean coaxes. His voice rumbles, reverberating through the palm Castiel has pressed against his chest. 

“I’m trying,” Castiel replies and Dean sighs.

He shifts them around so Castiel is on his back. Dean curls up to his side, head tucked under his chin. He starts to rub Castiel’s chest, warm fingertips seeming to touch the quicksand edges of the void in Castiel. The robe slips lower as Dean circles wider and he pauses for a moment.

“This your angel warding?” he asks, thumb brushing skin as he traces the Enochian letters. “’S kinda hot.” Castiel can hear the smile in his voice.

“Yeah?” Castiel means to reply, but somehow the intonation gets away from him. It issues like a challenge.

Dean’s laugh is not much more than a huff, but he looks up at Castiel, amused smile firmly in place. “Yeah,” he says, thumb stroking over the inked skin. “I like it.” This tortured, abused flesh that Castiel now resides in, releases pain, siphoned off by every warm point of contact to Dean’s skin.

And then Dean sets him alight. Castiel forces himself to breathe, closes his eyes and tries to memorize the path of Dean's lips, the blazing trail Dean carves up his throat, over the crest of his chin, sinking into the softness of his own mouth. Castiel drinks him in like sustenance, every shared breath purer than grace.  Purer, certainly, than the putrid rot at his core. The cannibalized patch job.

“Like the way your skin tastes,” Dean murmurs, dipping his head to the curve of Castiel's throat. “Kinda like copper. Like electricity, if it has a taste.” He sucks wet, burning kisses along the skin and Castiel shudders when the cool air rushes in to dry them.

“Dean. What’re you doing?” Castiel asks. The contraction wobbles, destabilizing his words, reflecting his own unsteadiness. He’s off-kilter. Out of bounds. They don’t cross the lines. It hurts to swallow again, but his breaths are wet and labored and Castiel is afraid he might set off a coughing fit. Dean lifts his head to meet Castiel’s gaze. His expression is calculating.

“Looking after you,” Dean says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He presses a kiss to Castiel’s skin, at the base of his throat. Below the phantom cut. The tenderness is excruciating. “Can I?”

Old habits die hard. Castiel starts to protest. “Dean, I can’t–” 

“Cas?” Dean interrupts, lips pressed in a firm line.

“Yes.” 

“Yes what?” 

“Yes.” Castiel takes a breath and it is already lighter.  He hesitates, holding a breath as he watches Dean’s hand slip under the robe. Breathing becomes difficult again. “Is this what humans do?”

Dean snorts. “No.”

Castiel frowns, trying to focus on the widening trajectory of Dean’s palm, shivering as a calloused thumb traces the sharp ridge of a hipbone. “I don’t understand.” 

“They should be so lucky,” Dean murmurs, and the smirk that tugs his lips up is strangely endearing.

For a few moments, there’s silence as Dean wanders.  His touch is gentle and sure, and then it disappears.  “Well?” he asks, the ghost of a touch sliding along Castiel’s cock. “Are we doing this?”

“I didn’t save you,” Castiel says, but he’s weak. His lips press a kiss to the corner of Dean’s mouth and he closes his eyes. He tries to forget himself, everything extraneous. He thinks, _I’m not an angel_.

“Consider those accounts balanced.” Dean’s touch is firmer now, fingertips tripping over the sensitive head, moving slow and easy. Testing the waters. He stops. “You could just say you don’t like it, you know.”

“I like it,” Castiel says, just a little to quick.

“And anyway,” Dean continues, “It’s a rite of passage. Fuck me over then die trying to make things right? Forgive me for fucking you over and then save my life? We had to break the cycle. Welcome to the family.”

Castiel starts to hum but stops himself. Then he catches himself trying to buck up into Dean’s hand. “This isn’t,” he says, stilted and halting. “It isn’t how we are.”

“No?” Dean’s chuckle is dark and warm when Castiel spreads his legs and sags closer. “What happened to all that stuff about tearing up the pages? Making it up as we go?” He squeezes on a downstroke, smears a bead of precum on the upstroke, and then repeats it all over again.

“That was different.”

“Look at me,” Dean says, pressing his forehead to Castiel’s. “Doesn’t work like that. It’s all the same. Then, now. You, me.”

“Where are you, Dean?” Castiel asks, because it’s now or never. He’s on the cusp of something incandescent, that human release, the corona of an eclipse in a feeling just as ephemeral. He starts to say the words, the three-tone trip down the tongue that encompasses a feeling as vast and infinitesimal as every last atom in him but Dean seals his mouth in a kiss, stealing the words away.  Now is not the time.

Dean’s smile is a blade and he cuts to the quick. Castiel erupts like blood, sluicing through slit veins, racing to meet Dean’s gravity. His fingers tighten their grip on Dean’s shirt, as if that will keep him here. As if that will help. It doesn’t. For a few, scintillating moments, Castiel soars. The come down is terrible, filled with the sickening agony of reality. Dean smiles and takes care of him. He brushes back sweaty strands of hair from Castiel’s brow and kisses the fevered skin.

“Where are you, Cas?” Dean asks, wiping his hands. The accusation is gentle. “Where were you?”

 _That’s not fair_ , Castiel thinks.

Dean kisses him again and graciously offers, “Sleep on it. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

The phone buzzes. It’s the phone, it must be. Castiel tries to keep from opening his eyes. It is the phone. It could be Sam. He gives up and opens his eyes. He doesn’t need to look around to confirm what he already knows. Dean is gone.  Dean was never here. But angels don’t sleep. Angels don’t dream.


End file.
